An integrated circuit may include redundant components that can be used to substitute damaged componentry. For example, one type of memory circuit includes a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) array of memory cells. The memory cells are arranged in rows and columns, each of which is addressable for purposes of storing a bit of information. As the density of memory cells increase, the number of faulty cells also increases during the fabrication process. To reduce the effect of faulty cells, redundant memory cells, or rather redundant sections of memory cells may be used to repair a damaged section of the array, wherein the damaged section includes one or more damaged memory cells.
Once a damaged section of the integrated circuit is identified, the repair process includes replacing the damaged section with a redundant resource. For instance, in the memory array, selection of the redundant section may be achieved through the application of fuse circuitry. More specifically, a fuse that is associated with a redundant section may be blown, such that when the fuse is intact, the original but later damaged section of memory is accessed for memory storage, but when the fuse is blown, the redundant section is then used for memory storage instead of the damaged section. Various techniques may be used to blow the fuse. However, blowing the fuse may be time consuming.
Therefore, how to speed up the fuse blowing time are problems to be improved in the field.